


quod ore sumpsimus, domine

by York



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Conversations, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Pre-Epilogue, it's a study date, with making out and milkshakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 22:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12543168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/York/pseuds/York
Summary: "I was in the neighborhood.""It's never just an 'I missed you' with you."Ronan shows up at St. Agnes unannounced. An attempt at studying is made.





	quod ore sumpsimus, domine

Going to Adam's was as much muscle memory as it was the feeling of approaching a waterfall in an inflatable raft. A stomach-drop of unknown fear, a shoulder-shove of exhilaration. The roads rivered with gravel, its current clutching at him as he drove through the downtown streets of Henrietta, passing one familiar landmark after the other in a strip of sepia film.

It was a habit borne of repetition: Mass on Sundays, attended after dawn, dressed a suit that crawled up his neck and checked his pulse. On any other day of the week, he went to the church for Adam, and loosened his collar to let his pulse run free.

No matter how many times Ronan went, the same curves and lights and signs in his rearview mirror, every time felt just as new as the first.

The drive was more often taken in the dead of night, back in the days of gruff silence and sleeping on the floor, in the days before demons and kisses and dreaming with Adam's head resting on his chest. Now the orange sky shimmered and streaked through his dusty windshield, the day winding down with ease, and the stained glass windows of St. Agnes were bleeding blues in the slanted afternoon light.

There was always this breathless moment, the one right before he toppled over the edge of the waterfall and plummeted. It was the weightlessness of standing before the door to the apartment above the church, the knuckle-dense knock still reverberating in his chest. He did it twice to make sure it was heard, in case Adam was invested in an audiobook, or his hearing ear was turned away. Often he took to multitasking while his hand scrawled at something else, overachievement being his default setting, intent on every second being valuable.

It took fewer seconds than he was expecting — the door handle curled, Ronan's stomach along with it, then it was falling, falling — and Adam Parrish stood in the open doorway, outline haloed by backlight.

He was, as always, ruthlessly beautiful, taking Ronan's attention like he owned it, his work uniform half-off and hanging around his waist, grimy white t-shirt stretched away from his collarbone in a painfully inviting way. It was maddening — whenever Ronan thought he was done falling he was proven wrong, again and again, never breaching the surface of the lake at the bottom. It was this: endlessly, bottomlessly, wanting to go to him, wanting to be wrapped up in him, in the very real boy of Ronan's waking world, outside of what-if dreams —

They were staring at each other. For a good few seconds. Adam raised a fair eyebrow. Ronan gathered himself.

"Hey, fucker," he finally said, dumping his bag on the floor of the bedroom, then leaned in to kiss Adam's cheek, a quick and flickering heat, and headed for the bathroom to piss.

This was the second time this week he'd shown up at St. Agnes unannounced, although Adam had implied over a month ago that he was free to come and go. Something about _I like having you here_ to which Ronan had said _gross_ and proceeded to come over the next day with takeout dinner in hand.

The room was theirs at the end of the day. At Monmouth bustled Gansey and Blue, toting Henry around with a frequency Ronan was beginning to become suspicious of, their presence lending little to privacy. At the Barns frolicked Opal and Chainsaw, who minded themselves and the fields more than anything, but the last time Adam had decided to take things further on the living room couch, during the heart of winter, it was also the exact same moment Opal had decided to throw open the back door in a gallant quest for raven mittens. "Why the _fuck_ does Chainsaw need mittens," Ronan demanded, tugging a blanket over his lap while Adam fixed the buttons on his shirt.

"She's cold in the snow," Opal complained, and sure enough, a shivering and shiny-black wet bird hunched on her shoulder, looking more pathetic than she had when she was a barely-feathered baby.

So, everywhere else had distractions — at St. Agnes, it was just them.

He'd expected to find Adam here in his school uniform: tie meticulous, shouldered in his sleek blazer, shirt tucked into slacks. Seeing him half-dressed in his mechanic's coveralls wasn't a letdown as much as it was unexpected.

"You had work?" Ronan asked, kicking the bathroom door closed behind him with his heel.

"Yeah," Adam's voice carried. "Picked up a shift on short notice. I just got back, my room is a shitshow." The last part he said as an observation, not an apology. Ronan appreciated his word choice but counted it bullshit — his floor was pristine, bed unmade with sheets resting on top, desk piled with papers but nothing out of the ordinary. On the way in he'd seen a laundry basket tucked against the wall, out of the way, its contents in a freshly tumbled lump. In comparison, Ronan's rooms were after-images of tornado touchdowns.

"What about class?" he called from inside the barely-ajar door, keeping out of sight. Their personal space boundaries had blurred over the months, months of testing the waters with hands at belts and hands past belts and there being no belts at all because the pants had gone to the floor, but both of them had the good sense not to ruin the romance by leaving bathroom doors open.

Adam replied, "I went," which wasn't surprising in the least.

Of course he went. Missing classes was for an Adam Parrish of a bygone past that would have done anything to hide his bruises, an Adam Parrish whose household wanted nothing more than for him to never go to that school again and save them all the money. The Adam Parrish of today only took events of doomsday or dying friends as exceptions for absences, and luckily, there hadn't been any of those since last year.

Still, it wasn't that Ronan agreed with Adam's breakneck pace. Running himself ragged with late nights and odd shifts, but it was his choice. Ronan understood that. He just had to fucking deal.

"You would have liked today, though," Adam said. "Gordon got caught plagiarizing in poetry and had his pants strung up a flagpole by Milo."

Though that image was thrilling, it was probably figurative, and in any case, Ronan couldn't be bribed into regretting ditching Aglionby with any kind of quality secondhand embarrassment.

"Oh, poetry, was yours about me?"

There was no response. Ronan got the gist that he was being ignored.

He gripped the edge of the sink, checking himself in the mirror. Had that blemish been there yesterday? Near the one under his jaw, where he'd cut himself shaving. And when had he gotten sunburned? Was it from his afternoon spent with Opal? There was also the possibility he could simply be flushed from being here, in this apartment, doubling down on it with self-conscious fidgeting.

He didn't care what he looked like, he told himself. It didn't matter, anyway. _It's just Adam, it's just Adam._

 _Just_ was a misleading word, he decided. Too easy to lie with.

What he'd meant was: sometimes Adam looked at him like he was frightfully glad Ronan was still alive. In whatever shape he was in, whatever he looked like.

What he'd meant was: it was _Adam_ , and Adam wasn't _just_ anything.

Breaking the silence, Ronan asked, "Who'd he steal from?"

"Uh," there was a heavy thump on the floor, followed by a low hiss, "Dickinson, of all people. Eight em dashes in a stanza," another rustle, a zipper being drawn, "and he had the balls to say he wrote it, like it's not obvious enough he couldn't even write a haiku."

"She's a lesbian, you know."

Adam deadpanned, " _Lynch_."

" _Parrish_. I'm serious, there's actual textual evidence that Dickinson was a lesbian."

"You're serious," he repeated. "Okay. Double space that for me in twelve-point font, Times New Roman."

"Citations: I know gay shit when I see it."

"Oh my God, please write my essays for me."

His laugh was rough, hoarse, like running your hands through the dry burrs in long grass. Ronan ran the sink and filled a glass of water.

When he came back into the bedroom, Adam had his hands in his book-laden messenger bag, digging to another continent for something. He sat on his bed with his knees bent, bare feet on the floor, biceps on display with his sleeves pushed up and Ronan had to blink, an involuntary huffed breath halting him where he stood.

He had this. He could look. Fuck, it was normal — or, getting there, pulling up somewhere near normalcy with a pitstop at _what the fucksville_ — to have Adam Parrish as a boyfriend. Being in each other's spaces was old news, digging elbows into sides and impromptu floor sleepovers and tending wounds after reckless stunts. _This_ , though — the looking at each other, the smiles they had for _only_ each other, making a loud room quiet and a quiet room feel like watching a mushroom cloud bomb bloom into the air, a black and white silent movie where the caption read _Jesus Christ fucking kiss me_ —

— it had its differences.

Ronan sat on Adam's right side. He barely had to think about the gesture anymore. That was his place.

"This thing — always getting caught," Adam grunted, tugging a bent-spiral notebook free from a loose seam, and Ronan watched how his fingers elegantly unwound the frayed fabric from the metal.

Maybe it would do to dream him a new notebook tonight. Or maybe he should lay off. It was difficult these days to toe where the happy medium was, and the void where Cabeswater used to sprout complicated things. The gauze-thin veil of magic lining his dreams was a hollowed tree missing its rings, sometimes greeting Ronan in sleep with blackness and no explanation. He didn't take that lightly: dreaming was to be reserved for the important things. Things that were required.

"Sorry," Adam said. He placed the notebook on the crate beside his bed and turned to look at Ronan. Catching Adam at a time when he wasn't tired was an impossibility, but today he looked a little lighter, a little clearer in his eyes, and Ronan was glad for it.

He remembered the glass of water in his hand and held it out. "Here," Ronan said, like it was an afterthought.

"Oh." Adam blinked, looking confused for a split second, the concept of taking care of himself taking some time to recall. "Thanks." He accepted it, taking a sip, and pressed the back of his hand to his chin when a droplet trailed from his lips. "How was not-school?"

So they were still doing pleasantries. It was a good thing Ronan had something queued, steadily getting used to having Adam be the person he told all the nonsensical shit to. All of the everyday things that would bore anyone else but somehow, Adam _wanted_ to know.

He dug his phone out of his pocket, exaggeratedly burdened by having to do so, and tossed it to Adam, not really caring if he caught it but Adam's hand-eye was infallible, even with one hand.

"Check the camera," Ronan said, inclining his chin at it. "Opal thought it would be cute to make friends with a den of coyotes in the foothills. It's baby season."

Adam raised an eyebrow but put the glass down next to his notebook. "What does _friends_ mean?"

"I mean they'll eat out of her hand. It's creepy. She thinks she's Snow White." The pups had come out of their mother's den tentatively, drawn in by Opal's odd chittering, animalistic in a way Ronan found fitting for a hooved girl.

"The coyotes probably have rabies." Adam flicked a thumb, scrolling through the photos. "One of them could have bit her."

Ronan scoffed. "She already has rabies."

Without looking up, Adam said, "Have I ever told you how much she takes after you?"

"Yeah, funny guy, like a million times. You think you're so witty. Asshole."

Adam was biting his quivering lip looking at the photos — Ronan sympathized, it was the cutest shit he himself had seen all week, but now he was consumed with thoughts about biting Adam's lip — when he looked up dazedly. "Wow."

Pride inched into his voice. "Yeah."

"If y'all were having so much fun, why'd you come over?" Adam's eyes pulled with humor, and he quirked a smile toward Ronan, hooking a line in his heart and tugging, his long-voweled accent falling off the words like steam on glass. He handed the phone back, but it was only fated to be dropped to the end of the bed, as if it burned Ronan's hand to be held. He leaned into Adam when it was gone, into the small space between them.

"I was in the neighborhood," he said, tone changing. He covered Adam's hand on the bedspread with his own.

Adam softened, his eyes lowering down Ronan's face, dancing between his mouth and the spot on his chest above his heart that was thrumming loudly enough to echo. A spark in Ronan's spine chased down his back, a bundle of nerves alighting. Their kindling closeness was an ignition waiting to happen, barely a breath apart — if Adam were to tilt his head just so, lower his shoulder by so much, they could brush noses. "It's never just an 'I missed you' with you."

"I missed you."

He said it without hesitation, leaned in further, and kissed Adam.

At the back of his mind, Ronan told himself that it wasn't what he came here for, that seeing Adam wasn't foremost for the physicality. That it wasn't as if they couldn't stop jumping each other's bones since last fall. Instead there was more hand holding, more thousand-yard stares, a lot of grief to go around and a relationship to figure out at the same time. It took a while to get to this point, but this — these parts were good, too.

It was always good like this. Always made Ronan feel like the happiest boy in the world to hold his breath with his lips pressed to Adam's and feel a flush in his face, in his chest. Happiness by happenstance was a special brand of substance that kept him up, kept him awake, away from soporific habits to drive him back to dreaming. He didn't need dreaming for this. Didn't need anything else with Adam against him and his head heightened by adrenaline.

Ronan held his eyes shut — when he committed to kissing Adam, he fucking committed — and felt Adam's hand grip his shoulder, holding onto him as they swayed together like two wind-tangled branches. His senses went heady with everything Adam did: how he relaxed into the kiss, breath puffed from his nose, tension eased out molten smooth.

They were in another world, single-minded, but still so careful with how they moved: where they placed their hands, when they parted for air, what to do, what in _God's name_ to do next. Learning came slowly, but they both knew what trying and trying again at something looked like, and kissing was a different kind of that same tentative territory.

Adam sighed into another initiated kiss, opening his mouth and pressing in again, taking Ronan's lower lip between his and then there was tongue involved and Ronan was done in. It was all hot faces under fingertips, his hand sliding into Adam's hair, his neck tingling when Adam's thumb rubbed his hairline. This push and pull, Adam's warm mouth — he was _good_ , and Ronan had told him before how good of a kisser he was, but it was all he could do not to make an embarrassing sound. In return, Ronan dragged his teeth against Adam's lip and bit softly, and then it was Adam's turn to make a noise, tapered into a rough exhale.

Ronan slid his hand to Adam's waist, then scaled up to his ribs, catching pads of fingers on the fabric of his shirt and dragging up the hem. They tilted off-balance, leaning into each other heavily — then they were falling back toward the pillows, Adam pulling him by his shoulder, Ronan's hand against his chest. Ronan couldn't stand hovering above a lying-down Adam for longer than a few seconds before kissing him again, a long and closed-mouth press, shifting balance up his body and kneeling with one leg between Adam's thighs.

The kiss broke for air, Ronan rubbing the stubble of his face on Adam's jaw, which he knew was a sore subject of tickling, but Adam grunted like he was in pain.

"Ronan," he said. It came out too soft, like he was unsure of his own voice, and Ronan's body felt it all the way down. "Shit. I have laundry to fold."

"Mmh." Ronan kissed his collarbone.

"Flashcards to make."

"I bet." His throat. When Adam swallowed, Ronan felt it under his mouth. One of Adam's hands curled and clutched at the pillow under his head.

A little desperately: "An essay to outline."

"Can't forget that." Back up to his ear. Adam's skin scented of motor oil, and Ronan had waited all day to taste it.

"And apparently, a boyfriend to make out with."

Ronan pulled back, the victory sweet and swift. "This is all in lowest to highest priority, right?"

Adam's face scrunched up, but not unhappily. "On an ideal day," he murmured, though he didn't seem eager to act on the proposed order of events, because Ronan was able to lean in and coax open his mouth again with his tongue, and his groan didn't sound like one of disappointment.

Getting carried away was second nature, both falling into it like it was a habit, like they hadn't hungered for it as long as they could remember. Adam fisted his hands in Ronan's shirt and then it left this plane of existence, flung into another dimension — no, it hung, crumpled, on the back of Adam's desk chair — and Ronan had his palms on the skin of Adam's stomach.

"I really _was_ going to spend the night," Adam started, but Ronan moved a hand up his chest and he arched into it, " _writing_... oh, God."

"Take a break."

"You can't —," his breath puffed in the air as Ronan kissed across Adam's cheek, "you can't take a break from something you haven't started."

"So should I stop?" Ronan asked into Adam's hearing ear. He didn't receive a wordy response, but Adam's hips shifted on the mattress and a small grunt escaped his throat. Low, quiet, in the way he did whenever his boyfriend was being difficult. Ronan took his hands back from under Adam's shirt and rose up on his palms, elbows locked. "What was that?"

His cheekbones were dusty-pink, breathing a pace quicker than normal. He was worked up enough to stop playing games. "No," he said, wrapping a hand around the back of Ronan's neck, fingers splayed against his skull, and a lava-slow tingle ran down Ronan's spine when he was dragged back down. The fire reached all the way to his toes, reached everywhere, when Adam rolled them over.

Pressed into the pillow, Ronan forcefully thought a silent prayer as Adam kissed down his neck, down his abdomen, thanking God for Adam Parrish's hip bones and his bony hands and his — everything else.

*

Ronan would have stayed in bed for the rest of the day together, fingers laced or mapping knuckles or brushing softly across jaws. It could have been mouths against necks, kisses over fluttered eyelashes, legs slid between each other's until it grew dark and dim and their shadows were all they could see, but Adam was an asshole, and he unwound himself from Ronan's arms to go take a shower.

When he came back in a fresh pair of jeans, steam lingering on his skin and ruffling his towel to his hair, Ronan was still sprawled on the bed in his underwear. He'd busied himself by flipping through his music library, glancing at radio stations and albums he'd been meaning to take a look at. Most were for driving, windows cranked down, noise loud enough to warrant a disturbing the peace violation. Some were for sleeping, shoulders slumped against Monmouth's walls, dreamy and eerie enough to call him to unconsciousness.

Fewer were for softer, more embarrassing things.

"Ronan."

He squinted up, like he was just noticing Adam's presence. Like his peripheral vision wasn't dancing circles around Adam's silhouette no matter the time, place, weather.

Adam said, "I _do_ have to work."

"I'm not stopping you," Ronan said.

"You're being distracting." Adam waved the towel at him, all black boxers and black tattoo and bare skin. "Put a shirt on."

Ronan grinned, arrogant and indiscreet, and stretched a long leg from the bed to nudge Adam's hip with his foot, to which he received a whack from the towel. Laughing, he withdrew, and paid the price of staying in Adam's apartment by putting on some fucking clothes, and snapped his headphones back over his ears.

After a few shitty finds, he found a stupidly idyllic folksy tune about summer fields and sandy hair. He looked up at Adam — whose brow was furrowed, mouth quirked to the side as he wrote. Studious, deep in thought, eyelashes low, the sight spreading warmth through Ronan's chest. Was he really that kind of guy?

Yeah, he was. He added the song to his Adam playlist, and settled in to listen to the rest.

Time slipped away from him. The sun dripped downwards past the freckled panes of the window; Adam's lamp went on; Ronan's eyes went closed. He might've dozed. When he opened them again the room had drawn darker, the corners of it eaten by shadows, a spotlight of yellow light from Adam's desk illuminating his frame.

Ronan studied him as carefully as Adam studied his work. Drowsy, and his eyelids drooping, Ronan felt a happiness pulling at the corner of his mouth where no one would see it.

Then he noticed Adam's mouth, moving slowly, muttering something.

He shook his head free from his headphones, the sound of crooning sappiness losing its body and fading to an echo against his throat. Adam's voice was soft, barely a whisper and unintelligible. "What the fuck are you saying?" Ronan said, gruff and low. He hadn't slept, he thought, because he hadn't dreamt, but his voice sounded like he did.

Adam blinked up, his lips parted in surprise. He saw Ronan on the bed, propping himself on an elbow and rubbing his eyes. "Hm?"

"What were you saying," Ronan said, louder this time after finding his voice.

A stack of flashcards were plucked from the desk, waved in the air, pinched together by Adam's fingers. "Vocab. Saying it out loud helps with memorizing. Mondegreen; mishearing a phrase to make it sound better than the original," he recited mechanically, without looking at the card. "Did I wake you?"

"No." Ronan crossed his legs, sitting up. "It just sounded like fucking gibberish."

Adam hummed once. He thunked the stack of cards back on his desk. "Yeah, I doubt anyone would actually use these." His fingers rubbed at his neck, working an invisible kink out of it, tilting his head to the side to get at a bundle of muscle.

"English has words for the weirdest shit," Ronan muttered.

"Latin doesn't? Academia just like to find the most useless shit out of all of them." He sounded huffy, frustrated. He'd been at it for a while. Ronan wanted to drag him away from it.

"Who are you?" he said. "Ribbing academia? You love it. Make love to it, all night, don't get any sleep because of it. Makes a man jealous."

Adam half-laughed, half-coughed. "Look, man, standardized tests are really good at soul-sucking."

"Oh, no, totally, I get it, you're preaching to the fucking choir."

"How could I forget," Adam said. Long fingers still pressed around at the back of his neck. If his grimaces were anything to go by, he was sorely in need of a massage. Ronan was about to offer one but reigned in the urge at risk of distracting him further. The sooner Adam finished his work, the sooner he could sleep, relax, close his eyes. Everything he desperately needed.

Ronan held out a hand and twitched his fingers in the air. "Give it here, I'll quiz you."

There was a curious silence. Ronan could hear crows cawing outside. Then Adam turned in his chair to face the bed, eyebrows a perfect pale arc. "Really? The patron saint of _fuck school_?"

A glower contracted Ronan's features together. "You'll finish faster if you hand it over."

Adam looked him up and down, at his outstretched hand, then ceiling-ward, considering. Ronan grunted impatiently. Then the stack of flashcards flopped to the bedspread, spilling against his foot.

"Sure," Adam said.

 _Fuck am I doing_ , Ronan thought, picking up the first one on the top. _I'm too fucking in love_.

 _Too_ was also a misleading word, he decided. It was the easiest to lie with.

What he'd meant was, _I would do anything for him, wouldn't I?_ The _too_ implied it was a bad thing, a sneaking lie misplaced in the middle of a truth: Being in love with Adam was the most honest feeling he'd ever let into his heart.

Ronan started reading. "Okay, this one's — Adam, this is definitely an STD. Mumpsimus?"

"Sounds like one, I guess," Adam said, smirking. Then he closed his eyes to think. "It's, um, following an unreasonable tradition."

They passed time with the call and return, Ronan adding unnecessary commentary ("Here's a mnemonic device: just remember it rhymes with gonorrhea") and Adam answering with pinpoint memorized accuracy ("Just because a panacea cures all diseases — oh, God damn it, Ronan"). It ended up going quickly after all, and sooner rather than later, Ronan flipped the last card out of his hand.

"Word for word, nerd." He toed the pile of flashcards away from him on the bed, plagued by their nearness, but Adam rolled his eyes and stepped over to gather them up again. He absentmindedly shuffled through them, sitting back down in the chair, organizing them from Ronan's dedicated disorganization.

"Thanks," he said. There was a twitch to the corner of his mouth. "That was actually helpful."

Ronan raised an eyebrow, a perfected derision. "You don't have shit to worry about anyway. Nothing matters for second semester seniors."

"I still have to graduate. And," continued Adam, cutting Ronan off, probably because he was starting to look smug with the indirect acknowledgement, "fives on AP tests give credits, so I might not have to take calculus first year."

Homework was practically pointless at this point, and Adam knew it, but old habits and Adam Parrish were old friends. Ronan fought with a frown and tried again anyway, both because he wanted to flatter his genius boyfriend more and because he was a prodding shithead. "Every Ivy League school is begging for you."

"I didn't apply to every one of them. Applications cost money, Ronan."

Ronan grinned at him crookedly. "Forgot that Dartmouth was too shitty of a pigsty for you." The application process had been long and stressful to slog through, but when Adam's acceptance letters started rolling in, Ronan had kissed his face ten times for each one while Adam tried to read through all of the fine print: scholarship information, registration deadlines, course loads, honors program offerings. There was still a lot to decide on, pros and cons to weigh, but Adam didn't have to choose just yet. He had time.

Caught by inspiration, Ronan rolled over and posed with his head in his hand. "Hey, which one am I, Harvard or Yale? Mr. Parrish. We love you so much. Please grace us with your presence. We'll suck your dick."

"That is not Harvard _or_ Yale. Maybe closer to what Princeton said." Adam's expression turned impish, and he said, "Actually, I think that's just you."

It took a second for it to sink in, but Ronan launched a pillow at Adam, arcing low and thumping the back of his chair. "You're such a fucking little shit," he said, a frustrating flush starting from his cheeks and going all the way to his ears. Adam caught the projectile before it hit the ground, and tossed it back on the bed, his loose smile bright enough to have an academic career itself.

Ronan said, "It's almost nine." He unwound his headphones from around his burning neck and let them drop to the bedspread. "Come on, Parrish. You can complain more about fucking Aglionby when I have a milkshake in front of me."

But there were still stacks of papers and books on Adam's desk, and he had this look on his face like he was going to say some shit like _I'm fine, I don't need anything_. So Ronan said something before Adam had a chance to pitch an idea that left him on an empty stomach: "Never mind. I'll bring back burgers, keep studying."

Ronan started pulling on his boots, laces loose enough for kicking off or stomping into, but Adam put down his pencil. "No, I'll come," he said, getting up and putting his arms through the sleeves of his hoodie.

"You sure?" Ronan asked, standing up.

Adam reached out to twine his fingers with Ronan's. "You're the one always bugging me about taking breaks."

"So I am." He fiddled with the drawstring of Adam's hoodie, cinching it around the back of his neck, and Adam took it as a cue to lean into his chest and press their mouths together. It was new, new, brand new, everything with Adam, the touch of his fingers on Ronan's stubble, palm flattening to cup his cheek, the bloom of clarity in Ronan's senses, the swooping canyon opening in his chest, and it was that feeling of abrupt weightlessness all over again. _I love you_ , he said with a kiss, or two or three, one for each word, until Adam was laughing and turning his cheek into it.

He wanted those kinds of smiles to stay on him, the carefree nod of his forehead into Ronan's shoulder, the line of his neck relaxed and posture easy. Ronan wanted to be there, the whole way, to make sure it did.

It was up to Adam if he was allowed, he guessed.

He squeezed Adam's hand and pulled them toward the door.

*

It went desperately unspoken, the college thing. Their relationship _during_ the college thing. The long-distance details that neither of them wanted to consider, avoiding it with cut-off sentences and abruptly breaking pace, like gnats at ankles, like skirting a forest fire creeping through the brush without a dug-out path to stop it.

Ronan was trying to change that.

"You're not thinking of picking a school just because of where it is, are you?"

Adam was leaning over the center console of the BMW, stealing the straw of Ronan's milkshake into his mouth, and Ronan let him, holding it out. His hair was drying from his shower, which was a damn shame in the first place, because it had looked so wonderfully mussed from before. Sticking up, dandelion-soft, even though Adam took pains to smooth it out from the havoc of Ronan's fingers. Ronan wanted to reach over and ruffle it all over again.

Adam sat back in his seat, holding the back of his hand to his mouth as he swallowed. "No. Not _just_. Not mainly. There's other things, reputation, financial aid, curriculum..." He ticked them off his fingers.

"Good," Ronan said.

"Is it?"

Ronan shuttered down any reaction, practiced at rolling ambivalence off his shoulders.

Truthfully, it was and it wasn't. It was, because Adam deserved to go to the best school for him, and fuck it if it wasn't as close to Singer's Falls. It wasn't because of a poisonous vein twinging near Ronan's heart, playing a flat instrument to the rhythm of his pulse even though he repeatedly told it to shut up, told it _planes exist, cars exist, I can visit him whenever I want, I can stay with him, crash on his floor if I have to, I'll teach Opal how to run the farm and she'll be fine_ —

She would be fine, he told himself. Opal could take care of herself, or stay at Fox Way. But he would be a remiss dreamer if he didn't worry about it.

It was more okay than it wasn't okay, so he told the only side of the truth that mattered: "Yeah. Of course you deserve all that. And you know I'd come see you if — even if you went to school in fucking California."

They pulled up to a stop. Chasing his words, Ronan scratched the short hairs at the back of his neck, his blunt nails digging into his skin. He was turned out raw, unpracticed, but damn, he was trying to make this work.

It was going to work. He'd make sure of it.

Adam's voice was tentative, a sort of tempered relief spread through it. "You would?"

When Ronan turned to look at him, there was a small smile on Adam's face, his eyes alight and full of hope.

Even if Adam went to a university on fucking Mars, Ronan would find a way. He would always find a way to be with Adam if there was a chance he could be by his side, if Adam continued to want him there — that, at least, Ronan was unflinchingly uncompromising about. Everything else was in the details.

There was something about co-dependency in those thoughts, the kind of shit that would be brought up during chaise-lounge counseling. He tacked that onto the enormous list of reasons for why he didn't go to therapy. (Ninety-nine of which had to do with the origin of most of his life's problems: the running family tradition of taking objects out of dreams. Doctor-patient confidentiality could go fuck itself on that one.)

Ronan grunted in response. He trusted Adam would get it.

There was a beat, then Adam put his hand over Ronan's on the gearshift. Ronan's heart surged at the touch. "So you think I'm the kind of person that would go to California?"

Ronan snorted. "Sure. But you better start getting used to saying dude."

" _Dude._ "

His voice awkwardly wrapped around the word and Ronan cackled, because it was cute and off and ridiculously endearing, and Adam shoved him from across the seat.

In another minute, as Ronan shifted into third gear, Adam placed his hand on top of Ronan's again.

*

"Sketching?" The half-finished graphite cube on the page was growing eyes from its corners when Ronan looked up. Adam's cheek had sunk into his hand, elbow propped on his desk, and he blinked drowsily at Ronan.

It was late. They'd already brushed their teeth together (Ronan had conveniently left a toothbrush at Adam's once and now it was a permanent resident), changed into sweats, gotten handsy at the bathroom doorway — before Adam hip-checked him away from his desk, insisting _homework_ this and _schoolshit_ that. Ronan still kissed his neck and gave his shoulders a few squeezes as he bent over another perfect paper. Then he kicked back in Adam's bed with his shitty #2 pencil and leather-bound sketchbook, headphones half-around his ears.

"Yeah," Ronan replied. "Helps with visualizing shit. If I can see it better, in three-D, think I can take it out easier." He bounced the eraser of his pencil on the cube and studied his lines. Something similar to this object had made an appearance in his dream last night, but was crushed underhoof by a stampede of wicker-antlered deer bleating something vaguely Gregorian as they passed, and he wanted badly to recreate it. Whatever it was, it had felt important, and he had a habit of chasing after dream clues like Alice down a rabbit hole.

So far, it looked more Lovecraftian than anything useful. Ronan considered erasing some eyes.

"You could fix your gravity problem first," Adam said.

That old critique. He was probably referring to the unnaturally heavy weight that dream objects often had when pulled into the world, unexpectedly dense to handle.

Ronan pointed the lead-tipped end of his pencil toward Adam without looking up. His voice was staccato, "Fuck you, working on it."

In his peripheral, he saw Adam grin with his palm still a pedestal for his cheek, not admonished in the slightest. It was tempting to look at, but Ronan kept himself in check.

Adam said, "I'm not used to you being all studious. It's kind of cute."

Ronan found himself both flattered and offended. "I got _B's_ , Parrish."

"I know. I always figured it was effortless. Did you draw any of me in there?" Adam asked, maybe joking, but Ronan thought it was a question that didn't need asking. They both already knew the answer, but Adam sounded like he was flirting with it, arm now slung over the back of his chair and looking at Ronan lazily.

Ronan's eyes gave in, darting up to consider him, tracing his features. He remembered how he felt when he'd gotten here this afternoon: if you could double-take without your eyes ever moving, that was how he saw Adam. Seeing and seeing again, and again in another take, something about him refocusing with each blink. Clear skin, neck stretched lazily in a comfortable slouch, eyes blue and dark, cheeks flushed with tiredness. Everything, he took in, memorized and rememorized.

He swapped his pencil to his other hand, reaching out to take Adam's relaxed hand in his own across the small gap between bed and desk. Ronan's thumb pressed into his palm, index into his knuckles, and he turned it over to examine the lines arcing across the skin. A little warmth began creeping up his neck, and he said, "Don't need practice for this."

Squeezing his hand back, Adam said, "You could draw it from memory?"

" _Dream_ from memory," Ronan corrected, and pressed his mouth to the knuckles of Adam's pinky and ring fingers. He was sure his expression was doe-eyed, and he turned it up at Adam from behind his hand, and it was worth it. Adam's breath caught; the quietest pause of breath.

Ronan held the back of Adam's hand to his face another moment, but at the touch of Adam's wandering fingers on his own wrist, threading through his leather bracelets, Ronan's ribs all simultaneously felt his heart beat. Ronan had to close his eyes. Then he released Adam's hand, fingers dragging, and he exhaled as he resumed lying against the pillows, looking back to the sketchbook in his lap.

He thought he could continue his work, but Adam was still staring in his direction. "You know, that... " Adam cleared his throat. "Didn't really answer the question."

A laugh took Ronan before he knew what to do with the feeling. All of that romance left him a little light-headed. "I'm actually working on the next Mona Lisa, it's called Parrish At Work. Now the surprise is ruined," he lamented.

"You're not," Adam accused, but he tried peering over the top of the paper.

Ronan dropped it down, the drawing's horrific eyes staring up at them both. "I'm not right now. You're in here. Maybe. Jesus, you're distracting me from my studies."

Adam did not look impressed at being teased using his own words, but Ronan had admitted it, so his expression was drowned out by delight. Ronan twisted his mouth, pointedly ignoring any more eye contact, fitfully done with talking heart-on-sleeve.

He knew that feeling would be short-lived, at least until the heat left his face. Though Ronan affected differently, there was nowhere else in the world he would be more comfortable than here, in this room and this place and next to this boy. Adam had a way of meeting his steps, sometimes pulling him, but their pace matched everything Ronan wanted.

Still, he drew up his knees and returned pencil to paper, focusing on drawing his dreams, while Adam focused on being Adam Parrish: valedictorian, human, magician.

It was later still, a seeping chill airing around their toes, when Adam sighed and sat back from his desk.

"Want to stay the night?" he asked.

The night was already the morning. On the upturned plastic container turned bedside table, the black and green digital clock read 1:11. Ronan nodded to it and said, "Make a wish."

"That's 11:11."

The second minute number ticked to a two. "Too late. You missed it."

Adam grinned over the back of his chair, entertained, looking at Ronan upside-down. He stretched his arms over his head, white t-shirt riding up his stomach, showing off the expanse of skin where Ronan had pressed his mouth to earlier. Fair hairs dipped from his navel to his waistband, and went on and on like Ronan remembered, and he felt a little bit on fire, a little bit happy. Staring at Adam was reciprocated, and didn't have to be this hidden thing that made him want to punch a wall. Now he could lean into it, as comfortably as it was to navigate a dream.

Adam made a small, pleased sound, and sank back down in a huff. "I need to sleep," he said.

Ronan flipped his sketchbook closed and disk-whipped it across the room. "Come to bed, lover."

Early next morning he'd have to go, let Adam be off to another shift and another slough of classes, but before that Ronan could kiss him and distract him and make him late. Before that they could have this: sleeping dreamlessly, waking up together, under blankets and arms and the assurance that they were safe if they just held each other tightly enough. Nothing, no harm could come in the expansive quiet of company, in their world above the rest of the world, silencing the siren song of the future and listening only to the wind through the cracks in the window and the calm of their own breathing.

Sometimes the days of a summer ago didn't feel so foreign. On nights like these, it was the feeling of falling all the same.

Ronan placed his headphones and phone beside the bed, with more care than his bygone sketchbook, and moved over against the wall to give Adam space.

"I knew I kept you around for a good reason," Adam said, slipping under the sheets beside him. "It's so warm." He moved closer to intertwine their legs, cold toes under Ronan's burning calves, and his fingers reached under Ronan's shirt to pull him in by his waist.

Ronan changed his mind about the wall. If he wanted warm, Ronan was nothing if not obliging. He rolled his weight on top of Adam completely, wrapping his arms around him and tucking a leg between his.

"Oh you _fuck_ —"

"Goodnight," murmured Ronan into his neck, and buried the word with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> the Latin in the title is a postcommunion prayer, "What we have received in the mouth, Lord."
> 
> tysm for reading whew drop a comment with a detail you liked? until next time!


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